As the world has turned, there is little in the way of "intended use" that effects what a font developer can do to improve the appearance of an existing font on the web. There is no difference in the hints one adds for a display face vs an agate design, pretty much regardless of what kind of typeface it is.

My question aim to the fact that I always knew that good perfomance in screen was equivalent to high level TT hinting. Well, as we all know this work was in the hand of a limited group of people and the amount of hours was considerable to have something as good as 'Verdana'.

Well, now we see foundries releasing fonts to be used in browsers by means of @font-face linking.

Since I suspect these new fonts are not hinted to the level of Verdana, what sort of optimizations is being used or what not-so-deep level of hinting is now considered acceptable for 'webfonts'?

David: As the world has turned, there is little in the way of "intended use" that effects what a font developer can do to improve the appearance of an existing font on the web.

True. But as the world has turned, there is also a lot in the way of intended use that a font developer might not bother to do because it wouldn't improve the appearance of an existing font on the web anyway.